Read Get in Trouble: Stories for Free Online Page B

is after the movie and after they are together and after they begin to understand the bargain that they have made. They are both, suddenly, very famous.
    Film can be put together in any order. Scenes shot in any order of sequence. Take as many takes as you like. Continuity isindependent of linear time. Sometimes you aren’t even in the scene together. Meggie says her lines to your stand-in. They’ll splice you together later on. Shuffle off to Buffalo, gals. Come out tonight.
    (This is long before any of that. This was a very long time ago.)
    Meggie tells the demon lover a story:
    Two girls and, look, they’ve found a Ouija board. They make a list of questions. One girl is pretty. One girl is not really a part of this story. She’s lost her favorite sweater. Her fingertips on the planchette. Two girls, each touching, lightly, the planchette. Is anyone here? Where did I put my blue sweater? Will anyone ever love me? Things like that.
    They ask their questions. The planchette drifts. Gives up nonsense. They start the list over again. Is anyone here? Will I be famous? Where is my blue sweater?
    The planchette jerks under their fingers.
    M-E
    Meggie says, “Did you do that?”
    The other girl says she didn’t. The planchette moves again, a fidget. A stutter, a nudge, a sequence of swoops and stops.
    M-E-G-G-I-E
    “It’s talking to you,” the other girl says.
    M-E-G-G-I-E H-E-L-L-O
    Meggie says, “Hello?”
    The planchette moves again and again. There is something animal about it.
    H-E-L-L-O I A-M W-I-T-H Y-O-U I A-M W-I-T-H Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S
    They write it all down.
    M-E-G-G-I-E O I W-I-L-L L-O-V-E Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S
    “Who is this?” she says. “Who are you? Do I know you?”
    I S-E-E Y-O-U I K-N-O-W Y-O-U W-A-I-T A-N-D I W-I-L-L C-O-M-E
    A pause. Then:
    I W-I-L-L M-E-G-G-I-E O I W-I-L-L B-E W-I-T-H Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S
    “Are you doing this?” Meggie says to the other girl. She shakes her head.
    M-E-G-G-I-E W-A-I-T
    The other girl says, “Can whoever this is at least tell me where I left my sweater?”
    Meggie says, “Okay, whoever you are. I’ll wait, I guess I can wait for a while. I’m not good at waiting. But I’ll wait.”
    O W-A-I-T A-N-D I W-I-L-L C-O-M-E
    They wait. Will there be a knock at the bedroom door? But no one comes. No one is coming.
    I A-M W-I-T-H Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S
    No one is here with them. The sweater will never be found. The other girl grows up, lives a long and happy life. Meggie goes out to L.A. and meets the demon lover.
    W-A-I-T
    After that, the only thing the planchette says, over and over, is Meggie’s name. It’s all very romantic.
    (1974) Twenty-two people disappear from a nudist colony in Lake Apopka. People disappear all the time. Let’s be honest: the only thing interesting here is that these people were naked. And that no one ever saw them again. Funny, right?
    (1990) It’s one of the ten most iconic movie kisses of all time. In the top five, surely. You and Meggie, the demon lover and his monster girl; vampires sharing a kiss as the sun comes up. Both of you wearing so much makeup it still astonishes you that anyone would ever recognize you on the street.
    It’s hard for the demon lover to grow old.
    Florida is California on a Troma budget. That’s what the demon lover thinks, anyway. Special effects blew the budget on bugs and bad weather.
    He parks in a meadowy space, recently mowed, alongside other rental cars, the usual catering and equipment vans. There are two gateposts with a chain between them. No fence. Eternal I endure.
    There is an evil smell. Does it belong to the place or to him? The demon lover sniffs under his arm.
    It’s an end-of-the-world sky, a snakes-and-ladders landscape: low emerald trees pulled lower by vines; chalk and apricot anthills (the demon lover imagines the bones of a nudist under every one); shallow water-filled declivities scummed with algae, lime and gold and black.
    The blot of the lake. That’s another theory: the lake.
    A storm is